The bell pull was a brass handle next to the front door. You pulled it and a wire ran through the wall and a bell rang somewhere inside the house. The bell pull was the first doorbell. No batteries. No electricity. A wire and a spring and a bell. You pulled and the house answered. The bell pull was a conversation between the outside and the inside that required your whole arm.

The bell pull had a sound. Every house had a different bell on a different wire and the bell rang in a different room and the sound traveled through the house like a rumor. You knew who was pulling by when they pulled. The mailman pulled once. The neighbor pulled twice. The kid selling newspapers pulled and ran. The bell pull taught you that the way somebody announces themselves tells you who they are before you open the door.

The bell pull broke. The wire stretched or the spring rusted or the bell fell off the bracket inside the wall. You pulled the handle and nothing happened and you had to knock. The bell pull breaking was the house going deaf. The landlord fixed it or he did not and if he did not you knocked and if nobody heard you knocking you went home. The bell pull understood that access was not automatic. Access was mechanical and mechanical things break.

The bell pull was beautiful. Brass or iron shaped into a handle that somebody designed. A lion's head. A woman's hand. A simple ring. The bell pull was the first thing you touched on a building and the building's architect knew it. The bell pull was the handshake before the handshake. The intercom buzzer is a button in a metal plate. The button does not introduce the building. The button just opens the door.

They replaced the bell pull with the electric buzzer. The buzzer does not travel through the wall. The buzzer travels through a wire to a speaker. You press a button and a sound comes out that sounds like every other buzzer in every other building. The bell pull had a voice. The buzzer has a noise. The difference between a voice and a noise is the difference between a greeting and a command.

See also: Door Knocker, The Buzzer